Introduction for Post Carbon Institute Friends

My frustration rises daily with every book and every article I read on global warming. Nobody looks the main culprit in the eye.

I admit I don't have a checklist of the relocalized businesses we'd need and a well thought out strategy for putting those jobs on line, But here is a start with addressing the larger context, and the imagination can begin to picture what not only to design, but what manufacturing and services would fit. The reshaping of cities, breaking them up into smaller cities, towns and villages, opening up landscapes to agriculture and nature where car- and oil-dependent sprawl used to dominate offers us a physical vision of how to address both climate change and what we can do about it in our own communities.

Reversing Global Warming
Richard Register

"Well, what can I do about global warming? It's such an overwhelmingly large issue, I hardly know where to begin."
I've heard this lament many times and the answer returned is generally something simple like, "Businesses should cap and trade, encouraging big CO2 producers to pay little CO2 producers and then the bigger offenders will improve their performance in order to regain the competitive advantage at a later date." Or, many say, "Save energy anyway you can as an individual - from driving less and bicycling more, to insulating your house, to wearing a sweater in winter."
Something positive has to be said for pushing government and industry to incrementally improve what they do and for adding up the small things in life style change. But you might also have the uncomfortable sensation that this kind of answer just doesn't ring true because something truly gigantic is going on in human affairs that's leading to first signs of something utterly exterminating that's going on in nature. Even assurances of a Tim Flannery, author of THE WEATHER MAKERS, that each of us can cut our share of humanity's carbon dioxide effluent 70%, leaves us a little suspicious after his fact-packed, lucid and truly frightening description of the gathering catastrophe. If you have a little feeling that it is going to be much harder than that, the sensation probably has a lot to do with the fact that, after all, it's the biggest bind humanity has gotten itself into to date and getting out of big problems takes very hard work. It usually takes systematic work too. In fact I think we're just now beginning to comprehend we've really screwed up and will have to face it that the little things simply will not add up.
What could make the difference, reverse global warming and get evolution of a healthy biosphere back on track? Maybe we could try prioritizing.

First we need to acknowledge that there are different ways of approaching the problem. They go something like this:

The individual
We all make decisions every day about what we will think about and learn, what we will do, how we will vote, what we will buy and how we will effect other people - in conversation, through direct effort to communicate, in educating our children and in how we vote, join protests, support policies and otherwise try to directly change things.

The specialist
Some people know a great deal about industry and business, environmental regulation, climate, biosphere and how we go about building what it is people create that causes the build up of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere.

Working with others
Politics. We need to change the way we do things and, whether it's one's personal inclination to be involved with others or not, changing policy is crucially important. We can be passively supportive about it, participating in a low-key way, or very active as advocates of particular policies. But in any case the important thing is to act, and act resolutely and consistently from now on. Together we can make all the difference.

A sense of proportion

We can all get a sense of the scale or effectiveness of various approaches; we can tell the difference between the common cold and a dangerous cancer and most of us would quickly give attention to the more serious problem first.
Let's start with the last one and prioritize cancer first, cold second. It will be a good idea to save energy in small ways. But shouldn't we look at the big ones first? And those include decisions about having a large family or small. Another big issue is diet, and whether to eat lots of meat or a small amount or go vegetarian. Meat eating is responsible for consuming up to ten times as much energy and land as eating no meat. The choices there are obvious, even if we have our tastes and don't want to face any change. The third Big One has to do with the sort of cities, towns and villages we build, which in turn determines our demand for energy and land consumption in a gigantic and little-noticed way. The culprit here is sprawl, cars, highways and oil, that is, cheap energy. The big problem is the city designed for cars. This is the problem that's so big we go to war to keep the oil flowing and the suburbs growing.
Families can be smaller, diet shifted away from heavy meat emphasis and cities can be reshaped for pedestrian, bicycle and transit while becoming far more lively and beautiful places, relieved of the pall of franchise restaurants under smog and the sameness in asphalt and billboards from Boston to Beijing, from Johannesburg to Jakarta. These are the big three that can be seen as a whole system of parts that reinforce one another and that, if addressed directly and effectively, could relieve the massive dependence society has developed as it drifted with relatively few second thoughts into ever more, more, more. More people, more consumption of energy and land for agriculture and more sprawl for space to stuff in ever more, and more and more stuff into our lives.
Regarding specialists, the first thing to notice is that the issues around climate change are complex and we can't all become specialists on the many various aspect of the problem. That means we need to trust someone among them. But many are severely compromised. A specialist from the oil industry is not the least compromised of sources for information on climate change. If we can be as careful as possible in finding specialists who appear knowledgeable, conscientious and not compromised by association with those who make money on processes that produces CO2 massively, then we are exercising reasonable caution in trying to understand what needs to be done for reversing global warming.
But in seeking best counsel, note that there is a difference between focusing on experts on the subject itself, and experts in what to do about the problem. The experts on the situation itself are doing quite well waking us up to the problem. But for all the massive quantity of information pouring forth in the papers, magazines and television, from pole to pole and melting mountaintop to steaming coral reef atoll, good information on what to do about it stealthily avoids the Big Three mentioned above. Few people want to face the real answers because they really are more difficult than the easy ones. Everyone is trying to get to the big solution in baby steps. It's far more comfortable that way, yes?
No! Not a short while farther down that path it isn't. That's when we discover that, as is proverbially stated, you can't cross the chasm in baby steps. More graphically, you fall off into the abyss if you try.
We are going to have to do some training, get warmed up and get ready for a difficult leap. If we are going to solve the climate change problem then we'd better pay attention to the Big Three, in other words, the experts who have knowledge about what family planning has worked and where in the world, the experts on low-meat agriculture and diets and the people who know a great deal about building cities to liberate us from cars and oil addiction need to be given highest priority as advisors to ourselves.

Up to us

Ourselves - we are the real experts, ultimately. Unlike politicians and wealthy, successful people who led us into this mess, even advertised us into this mess, we don't have to risk our careers and fortunes by admitting such big time mistakes. We can help matters, though, by helping those politicians who are courageous enough to admit their earlier mistakes and change.
We can listen to the right people but, more fundamentally, we need to decide what we can do. And then do it, or else this problem will carry our children to a lonely planet and a fate very unpleasant to contemplate. We may need spiritual discipline, psychological support, involvement of family or friends, or simple study to gird our loins for the battle to win our own best serious decisions, such as to have a small family, change our diet or move from a suburban house to one in an urban neighborhood or near a small town center where things can be done with one fifth as much energy and land. We may have to pay more attention to voting for people who are willing to face uncomfortable truths about economy, business and planning of our communities. We may discover we need to change our whole career if we hope to significantly help in what could be this last battle for humanity's future.
We may have to have real courage to face our families, neighbors and colleagues when they think we're over reacting or misinformed and there is no big deal, or, nobody can really do anything about it anyway, or, accuse us of guilt tripping them, or, think that we are violating some cherished idea they have about what we should do. We may have to choose to be somewhat unpopular, hopefully not forever, but to throw our efforts in with the only side that can ultimately win, the side that stabilizes climate on this planet.
When it comes to working with others and it might not be in your nature - perhaps you are one of those with a low tolerance for meetings, meetings, meetings - taking action via the ballot box, writing letters to the editor, talking to friends one-on-one, teaching your children, just reading and learning and so on are all crucially important. There is plenty to do and given the billions of hours people waste collectively on mindless television and other deservedly called "diversions," plenty of time to do it in. But if you thrive on or can handle the pressures of debate and attempts at influence, the big thing is the big thing.
Here's an example of something big. The US Government spends $34 billion a year on highway programs - 2005 Department of Transportation (DOT) figures - with plans for $35.5 million in 2006. Something small: $1.2 billion on Amtrak in 2005 being reduced to $.9 billion. These numbers are only the tip of the iceberg since developers and toll road builders are out there scraping away, private parking lots and parking structures are a-building, cities and states are spending other funds on their streets and highways, putting money into county hospital services for car wreck victims, paying police for traffic regulation work and so on. Some researchers claim the total car infrastructure and maintenance investment in the US is as much as $900 billion a year, about 30 times more than the DOT tip of the iceberg. Rails, from Amtrak to regional commute mid weight trains to streetcars have many other sources of support in addition to federal dollars too. They have their switching and maintenance yards, stations to maintain and so on. But it is interesting to see that the federal support is in the range of 36 times as great for cars than rail, and cars are part and parcel - that is integral to - the sprawl/paving/oil infrastructure. Imagine if it were reversed and the rails/pedestrian/renewable energy city were getting 36 times as much as the car infrastructure, the environmentally damaging one currently getting the big subsidy. Reverse that and we might just have an initiative big enough to start to solve this biggest of all problems humanity now faces.
For problems and changes that large, we need to deal with it together as a whole society in larger political ways or we might as well roll over and play dead. Dream as you may, biking and separating recyclables and all those other individually initiated activities, if not built on a foundation of improving policy that maximizes all those good personal actions by giving them the context of a healthy city is not going to get us very far.
Political action on the big items must actually be done, and not just fiddled at, while not just Rome, but the very atmosphere of our whole planet burns. Kick the knuckleheads out of office. Write new policies. Turn that fire hose of money for freeway overpasses and urban sprawl away from its destructive direction and aim its full stream toward creating cities and towns for people instead of cars. Every year 10% less for highways, cars and trucks. Pop Amtrak up to $5 billion immediately and increase it's budget 15% every year. Increase funding vigorously also for streetcar systems and regional rail. Take away those $4,000 tax credits (you still pay around $5,000 more anyway) given to hybrid drivers so they can help keep suburbs spreading out over the countryside and instead, give 100% tax credits for all bicycles. But most important, with government loan guarantees, pressure on bankers to lend to them and zoning to support ecological city changes, help developers invest in growing pedestrian/transit centers while removing urban dead tissue that is far from pedestrian/transit centers to restore an ever growing, not shrinking, amount of agricultural and natural land. Those who say we don't have the money to do this are either not thinking or they are lying. Educate the former. Fire the latter.
Do the big thing also means don't pussy foot around the crucial issues saying, for example, population is a taboo subject. Don't say working for urban rearrangements that favor the bicyclist and pedestrian over the driver is "politically unrealistic." That's just an excuse for inaction. What was "politically unrealistic" yesterday will be our salvation tomorrow.
As they say, what exists is possible. Regarding "overpopulation," in the "if it exists it must be possible" category was a society as religiously committed to anti-family planning values as the Catholic Church: Iran. During the war with Iraq the leaders in Iran finally began to realize the wildly high birth rate they were encouraging was a real disaster - and instituted policies to reduce it precipitously, despite the religion, and in fact despite the fact that it was their religion and the official religion of the state to boot. Car free cities are obviously possible too, proven by the fact that they exist, and often as prosperous and very pleasant places such as Venice, Italy; Zermatt, Switzerland; Gulongyou, China and a few other cities. To say, "Well, that's just not right for us" is to contravene espoused concern for climate change and amounts to saying, "I'd rather have the destruction of global warming than to think this one through." Very bad idea. You can't have it both ways. Either we face the necessity for fundamental change and get on with studying it and doing the best job of it we can, or we should stop pretending to be deeply concerned about climate change.

What's our home?

Regarding prioritization and where to begin, this concept isn't a bad first step: our home is the city not the house, the planet not the neighborhood. It's a question of full and proper services of the civilization - city - and full and proper services of nature - the whole planet, its atmosphere and biosphere - and our duties and reciprocal obligations to both city and Earth.
Now, as can be expected from one of those "experts," my area of knowledge and contribution being the ecologically-tuned city, I'll say a word or two about how anyone can make an enormous difference in the future of cities, in helping to build cities that don't cause global warming and possibly cities that can even help reverse it. I defer to others on family planning and good agriculture and diet, but regarding the city, town and village I believe I can identify the priorities if we want to solve this climate change problem which is taking on almost end of the world proportions.
Yes take transit, bicycle and walk when you can. But don't expect miracles on that front. It's far from enough. You will find yourself fighting constantly against long distances, traffic stuffing the streets, intersection lights that make you wait, wait, wait for the cars, and cars threatening your very life - and actually killing a fair number of you. For thus it has been built! The city, town and village - our home - has been remodeled for cars over the last 100 years and in this design it exists. It dominates life almost everywhere and is still the growing trend despite decades of solid evidence that it is failing on an environmentally colossal scale. One hundred years of massive investment in building the wrong kind of city delivers us a problem of planecidal - planet suicide - proportions. We have to change the city down to its very foundations in land use patterns to make serious progress on the "home" front. To expect solving the climate change problem to be easy or even only modestly difficult makes no sense. Yet to succeed at the difficult project of addressing it with ecological city building at the center of a strategy would produce a beautiful place and end up a whole lot more fun than where we're currently headed.
Getting a "better" more energy efficient car only postpones dealing with the way cities are laid out, built and maintained. Time is of the essence now. We don't have much of it if we are to reign in global warming. We need to do big things fast. Worse, the energy efficient "better" car, should it become generally more available, promotes sprawl development by making it cheaper to travel longer distances. This situation probably won't last that much longer due to the fact that gasoline prices are going up from now on as cheap energy, that is oil, passes its peak level of production and begins sliding away forever. But the counterintuitive benefit in bad gasoline mileage is that it alerts people to the expense of living too far from everything - an absolutely crucial lesson at this point in history. We've come to the point where the big car with lousy mileage looks ridiculous and the smaller car with good mileage is counterproductive, promoting more of the same whole sprawling urban package - and finally we figure out why: we built our cities for cars instead of people. If this isn't obvious to us soon, it certainly will be to our victim descendants soon enough.
That then means we need to reverse the process and begin building cities and towns for people all over again. Profound idea! That idea, plus small families and low energy and low land consumption agriculture, gets us almost to success in reversing climate change. I'll add one more point in a minute after finishing the discussion about designing and reshaping city and town.
Each of us can't move quickly as individuals in regard to changing the city in terms of design and policy. But we can move steadily and very effectively and we can start today to help those big changes in many ways. As Jaime Lerner points out - he is the world famous and highly successful architect/mayor who reshaped Curitiba, Brazil and turned it into the world leader in ecological city design and planning - in two years profound change and progress can be accomplished. In relation to something so big and ponderous as global warming, that's fast. Beyond moving from a house to an apartment or condominium closer to work and other things important to us - friends, shopping, recreation, socializing and so on - we have to work together or take personal initiative to support others who are. We can do this by supporting and voting for a "density shift" toward pedestrian/transit centers. We need to support growing centers that are liberated from automobiles and we need to withdraw development from the most car dependent areas and best soils and habitat. Some say, "Now this really is overwhelmingly hard to do. The city grows with a mind of its own and us small players can't effect it in the slightest."
Not true! There are millions of people with extensive knowledge and experience in shaping cities, if unfortunately generally in the wrong direction. They are developers, bankers and investors, architects and builders, planners and politicians and hired city staff members in planning, public works and parks, administration and on and on. That's on the development side, which can be either ecologically destructive or actually, in rare cases to date, ecologically helpful. On the other side there is immense sophistication among preservationists, neighborhood organizers against any change other than increase in property values, politicians cultivating voter favor by refusing to tax cars and gasoline, by holding on to the status quo that isn't. By that I mean the status quo is anything but static. It's us running in place, wildly churning our wheels, burning billi0ns of gallons of gasoline and diesel a year, the city standing there looking sort of sedentary, but its vehicles hurtling about as meantime bulldozers and steamrollers gradually, relentlessly spread that layer of asphalt out into, way out into agricultural lands and natural habitat in the US, China, India, Turkey, South Africa, Australia, Brazil...
But the bottom line here is that we can actually turn this around and build cities that cover far less land, rise a little taller, reintroducing creeks winding their way through our communities and redesigning clusters of buildings that add up, with public open spaces and transit/bicycle facilities, to cities demanding a very small fraction of the energy and land we now consume.
What this also means is that we all need to summons a little courage to face change and be willing to use our imaginations - then to support efforts to shift cities in the direction of "ecological" cities, cities informed by ecology in their design, construction and functioning. If you are not up to speed on the subject there is a critical need for self-education and education of friends, colleagues - everyone. There are books and classes available.
To get involved in advocacy and active projects, or join and support their activities if you are not the out-going sort, is crucial. There are organizations engaged in moving toward ecological city changes, restoration of nature in or adjacent cities, good urban design, greenbelt protection, support for rail and bicycles and so on. They are organized and very helpful - join them and lend a hand. Support your city's leadership when it is on the right track, both elected officials and staff - and oppose them when they are not. Contribute to open-minded flexibility in public deliberation keeping the urgency of the issue and necessity for new thinking ever in mind.
There are tools such as transfer of development rights, "ecocity" zoning maps and ecological demonstration projects that stand as examples of all the parts of a healthy city coming together in a small portion of a city or town and functioning harmoniously. These are too much to address adequately here in a short article, but they exist and a little reading elsewhere will reveal there are many other tools just waiting for service.
There are indicators of progress such as parking availability - we need less of it, not more - better transit service and new car-free pedestrian areas. We need indicators that are not just showing that we are chipping away at a few parts per million of this pollutant or that. We need to look at the big indicators. Many could hardly be more obvious: massive traffic jams, sprawling suburbs to the horizon, gigantic new single use buildings in city centers without a hint of consciousness about how they might be heated passively by the sun or how they might be part of a mixed use, fully lively pedestrian transit center. The big positive indicators would be ever fewer cars each year, progressively increasing number of car-free streets, bicycles everywhere and more and more people able to walk to most things they need.
Generally, the largest tool and indicator, rolled into one, is the ecologically tuned city or "ecocity" - is it growing or not. Good if so, tragic if not. Among all the things we can do to effectively deal with climate change, this is one of the Big Three that are indispensable if we hope to solve that problem.
Earlier I suggested there was yet one more point to add that might be indispensable. If we get a high level of success in reducing our production of CO2 and its damage to the atmosphere and climate with the Big Three, we might get close to or achieve stabilizing the CO2 levels in the air. But we will by then have way to much in the air and will need to start removing it or the heating will go on building up. Y0u've heard of the techno-fix of sequestering CO2, by pumping it out of the air and into the earth, with exotic chemical processes and so on. Well, one of them might actually work, if we can reduce demand far enough, and shift over to renewable energy systems, and that's a forest planting campaign like humanity has never seen before. Billions of trees. The sophisticated version of that is to, at the same time, restore as much of nature as we can with the very best knowledge we can summons for highest biodiversity. We can learn from indigenous people, where they still exist and have the knowledge, and we can learn from the biologists and ecologist who study these things. We can get busy at it right now. Big is not only beautiful in cases like this, it is likely to be our only hope.